Motor vehicles include a power plant (e.g., engine or electric motor) capable of producing driving power and a transmission for transferring the driving power to a driveline for driving a set of wheels at selected gear ratios. Automatic transmissions shift automatically to the appropriate gear ratio based on various vehicle operating conditions including speed and torque. Typically, a desired transmission operating mode is selected by the vehicle operator. The modes provided by most automatic transmissions generally include Park, Neutral, Reverse and Drive. In Drive, the automatic transmission automatically shifts between three or more different forward gear ratios based on the vehicle operating conditions. In this disclosure, the automatic transmission is considered to be operating in an Out-of-Park mode when it is operating in any mode other than Park (e.g., Neutral, Reverse and Drive modes). It is useful to shift the automatic transmission from the Park mode to the Out-of-Park mode without the need to start the engine or supplying electrical power to the vehicle. To do so, the vehicle may include a manual park release actuator for manually shifting the automatic transmission from the Park mode to an Out-of-Park mode. As used herein, the term “manual park release actuator” refers to an actuator that can be manually manipulated in order to shift the automatic transmission from the Park mode to the Out-of-Park mode. The manual park release actuator may be moved from a first position to a second position relative to a vehicle body in order to shift the automatic transmission from the Park mode to the Out-of-Park mode. It is useful to fix the manual park release actuator in its second position relative to the vehicle body in order to maintain the automatic transmission in the Out-of-Park mode.